[Imc] Fw: CDUI Fwd: Surprise! It’s also a dirty war for oil

Fri Nov 2 13:56:33 UTC 2001

-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Cannon <chuckcan at jps.net>
To: cDUI at yahoogroups.com <cDUI at yahoogroups.com>
Date: Thursday, November 01, 2001 8:37 PM
Subject: CDUI Fwd: Surprise! It’s also a dirty war for oil

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>Subject: Surprise! It's also a dirty war for oil
>
>[Nicholas Woomer, the Editorial Page Editor of the Michigan Daily,
>www.michigandaily.com, sent us the following note and article:
>
>I wrote sort of a "quick and dirty" synopsis of the role of oil
>interests in Afghanistan that may be of some interest. It was published
>today in the Michigan Daily, the student-run newspaper at the
>University of Michigan. The column combines different information from
>several different sources (some of which, I believe have been posted to
>portside already), but I think it's kind of nice to have everything in
>one short piece.
>
>Anyway, it's available here for your consideration:
>
>  http://www.themichigandaily.com/articles.php?uniqid=20011031e2
>
>  Best,  -N
>
>==================================
>
>Surprise! It's also a dirty war for oil
>
>Nick Woomer  Back to the Woom
>
>The truth: How hard it is to hide  -  and that's bad news for the Bush
>administration.
>
>America's so-called "New War" in Afghanistan is fueled by public
>perception that our primary  goal is to emerge victorious from a
>struggle to the death with terrorists who despise American  freedoms,
>and the battle begins by destroying the Al-Queda terrorist network and
>its  supporters. The secondary goal of the war is purportedly
>liberating the people of Afghanistan  from their brutal Taliban rulers.
>End of story  -  you can keep waving that flag.
>
>But that's only 2/3 of the story, there's yet another goal; one that
>has received sparse attention  and mostly in the foreign or alternative
>press: Access to oil deposits in central Asia.
>
>While Afghanistan itself is relatively oil-poor, its neighbors in the
>Caspian region are quite the  opposite. To quote Dick Cheney in 1998,
>back when he was just a humble oil baron: "I can't  think of a time
>when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically
>significant as the Caspian." Given the unimpeachable integrity of the
>Bush administration, I'm  sure it's just a coincidence that:
>
>In Cheney used to serve on the Kazakhstan Oil Advisory Board with
>executives from Chevron  and Texaco.
>
>In The Federal Trade Commission announced that it had approved a merger
>between Chevron  and Texaco only days before the bombs began to fall on
>Afghanistan. The resulting company,  ChevronTexaco, will have a 45
>percent interest in Kazakhstan's huge Tengiz oil field near its  border
>with Afghanistan (ExxonMobil has a 25 percent interest).
>
>In Bush the Elder, also cozy with Texas oilmen, is a member of the $12
>billion private equity firm  the Carlyle Group, which invests heavily
>in defense contractors, according to journalist Nina  Burleigh in an
>10/11 article for tompaine.com. This worries Charles Lewis, who works
>for the  Center for Public Integrity in Washington D.C. Lewis told
>Burleigh that "in a really peculiar way,  George W. Bush could, some
>day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions,
>through his father's investments. And that to me is a jaw-dropper."
>
>These "coincidences" are relevant to the current conflict in
>Afghanistan, and not just because of  its proximity to an oil-rich
>region. Afghanistan occupies a critical strategic position in a grand
>plan for U.S. oil companies to control Caspian oil.
>
>For years, U.S. oil interests have drooled over the prospects of
>building a $4 billion, 1,000-mile  long pipeline across Afghanistan
>that would pump Caspian oil to Karachi, Pakistan, thereby  allowing
>U.S. firms to sell it in the lucrative South Asian market. All that is
>needed is a ruling  government in Afghanistan friendly to U.S.
>corporate interests, not necessarily the Afghan  people; that is why
>U.S. firms  -  and recently even the U.S. government  - were warming up
>to  the Taliban right up until Sept. 11.
>
>When Taliban troops rolled into Kabul in 1996, the California firm
>Unocal began wooing  Taliban leaders until "long after the movement's
>bloody brutality and ties to terrorism became  the commonest knowledge"
>according to a story by Michael Daly in last Sunday's New York  Daily
>News. Daly goes on to describe in detail how Unocal flew Taliban
>Mullahs to the United  States and entertained them lavishly. When Bill
>Clinton sent cruise missiles into Al-Queda  training camps in 1998,
>Unocal suspended its plans for a trans-Afghanistan pipeline.
>
>"Lest anyone think the company had taken a moral stand, a spokesman
>insisted that Unocal had  not been influenced by protests over its
>dealings with the Taliban. The real reason was that oil  had dropped to
>a paltry $12 a barrel," explains Daly.
>
>Clinton's cruise missile adventure was a setback for Unocal but, as a
>Sept. 29 article in the  Toronto Star elaborates, right-wingers in
>Washington still saw a lot of money to be made in a  U.S./Taliban
>partnership. With the Bush administration's arrival in Washington,
>there was talk of  returning to the good old days between 1994 and 1997
>when "American policy toward the  Taliban was driven by fear of Iran
>and support of Unocal."
>
>These suggestions were bolstered by concern in right-wing policy
>circles that isolating the  Taliban would force companies to transport
>Caspian oil through Russia, thereby increasing  Russia's influence in
>the world unnecessarily. When the Taliban banned opium production in
>2000, the U.S. gave $43 million in aid to Afghanistan through the
>United Nations and  independent aid agencies. U.S. Secretary of State
>Collin Powell even suggested publicly that the  U.S. should reconsider
>its economic sanctions against Afghanistan.
>
>There are two direct implications of this information to the events
>that are unfolding before our  eyes on CNN. The first implication is
>that access to oil might be the reason why our government  refuses to
>enter into good-faith negotiations with the Taliban for bin Laden  -
>even if doing so  will cause thousands or even millions of Afghans to
>starve in the harsh Central Asian winter that  starts in two weeks (see
>my 10/17/01 column).
>
>The second implication of the "oil angle" is that it contradicts the
>administration's position that  this war is a struggle between good and
>evil, indeed for America's very existence. But, as Mark  Danner
>observed in a 10/16/01 op-ed piece in The New York Times,
>"Unfortunately, as we  know from the last quarter-century or more,
>political support thus purchased tends to be built  on emotion and
>brittle and weak. In the days and hours following the next terrorist
>Spectacular,  or the next, Americans may well begin to ask themselves
>why exactly they are being targeted  and what exactly it is they are
>risking their lives for."
>
>Bush had better hope Danner is wrong. When this war turns into what
>some commentators fear  will be "Vietnam with snow," and dead 19-year
>olds start coming home en-masse, I doubt most  Americans (or at least
>American students) will decide the war is an acceptable price to pay
>just  so they can continue driving gas-guzzling SUVs.
>
>Nick Woomer can be reached via e-mail at nwoomer at umich.edu.
>
>
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